European Social Survey data on 30 countries, covering years 2004-2009, are used to look into joint institutional [and other macro] determinants of the rates of dependent employment without a contract, informal self-employment, and unemployment (secondary jobs are not accounted for). Consistently...

Recent literature on tax evasion emphasizes the importance of moral considerations to explain compliance behavior. As a consequence scholars aim to identify factors that shape this so-called tax morale. However, the causal link between tax morale and actual compliance behavior is not established...

Economic growth in Russia in the first decade of this century almost doubled the country's GDP but was accompanied by substantial reallocation of labor to the unregulated sector while formal employment was on gradual decline. The paper overviews evolution of the Russian labour market during the...

This paper studies the effects of remittances on informal employment in the migrants' countries of origin, looking both at the remittance-receiving and non-migrant households. Using data from the Social Exclusion Survey, conducted in six transition economies in 2009, I find that receiving...

We provide an analysis of enforcement policies applicable to formal sector in dual labor markets. We use a framework with heterogeneous firms, endogenous determination of informal wage and politically dictated enforcement strategies. Firms which operate both in the formal and informal sectors do...

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector. We estimate the model using data from Brazil, and use counterfactual simulations to understand how trade affects...

This paper analyzes, using country-level panel data from transition economies and Latin America, the impact of labor market institutions on informal economic activity. The measure of informal economic activity is taken from Schneider et al. (2010), the most comprehensive study to date. The data...

In this paper the main focus lies on the development and the size of the shadow economy and of undeclared work (or shadow economy labor force) in OECD, developing and transition countries. Besides informal employment in the rural and non-rural sector also other measures of informal employment...

In this paper the main focus lies on the shadow economy and on work in the shadow in OECD, developing and transition countries. Besides informal employment in the rural and non-rural sector also other measures of informal employment like the share of employees not covered by social security, own...

We build a general equilibrium model in which both illegal immigration and the size of the informal sector are endogenously determined. In this framework, we show that indirect policy measures such as tax reduction and detection of informal activities can be used as substitutes for border...